Site Mobile Navigation

Two Nets Take Stock of Future in Brooklyn

Two guys with Brook in their name opened the Nets’ first team store in Brooklyn, which seems almost poetic until you consider how close they were to becoming former Nets.

Brook Lopez could have been trying on Orlando Magic pinstripes Monday morning instead of tugging a black Nets cap over his unruly Afro. MarShon Brooks could have been house hunting in the Atlanta suburbs instead of signing autographs along Flatbush Avenue.

The Nets tried hard in July to send Lopez to Orlando in an effort to land Dwight Howard. The Atlanta Hawks pushed hard to obtain Brooks in the deal that sent Joe Johnson to Brooklyn. But the Howard deal never materialized, and the Hawks finally relented, allowing Brook and Brooks to become key players for Brooklyn’s first N.B.A. team — and available to open the new Nets Shop by Adidas inside Barclays Center.

“I did everything I could to control my future,” said Lopez, the starting center, who stayed with the Nets on a four-year, $60.8 million contract. “I made it clear that I wanted to be here. I worked towards that, and I was confident that things would work out in the best way possible.”

Brooks seemed awe-struck after receiving his first tour of the arena, marveling at its cavernous interior (“It’s very spacious — it goes up”) and predicting that the Nets would enjoy a very loud and very healthy home-court advantage.

Lopez got his tour Friday at the arena’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. He was the only player in attendance that day, an indication of just how eager he was to see his new home. Lopez spent several minutes walking around the court, gazing up at the rows of black seats.

The arena’s long-awaited opening surely meant more to Lopez than any other Net. Drafted in 2008, he is the Nets’ longest-tenured player and the one who has endured the most to reach this point. The Nets won 92 games and lost 220 in Lopez’s first four seasons while burning through three head coaches, two general managers and two nondescript New Jersey arenas.

Lopez is one of two Nets (along with Kris Humphries) remaining from the humiliating 2009-10 season, when they lost a franchise-record 70 games. He chuckled when it was suggested he had earned this moment.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

“I’m pumped,” he said. “Throughout that whole process, everyone kept talking about Brooklyn and stuff like that, how exciting it was going to be. So I just focused on making myself a better player, helping my team in any way possible. And with all the talk I heard about Brooklyn, I knew it was just something I wanted to be part of. It was something that was going to be big.”

Lopez endured a broken foot that wiped out nearly his entire final season in New Jersey. But he is healthy again and has been scrimmaging five-on-five with his teammates during informal workouts this month.

“I haven’t been thinking about it when I’m playing,” Lopez said of his foot, adding, “I’m very confident out there.”

Before the injury, Lopez had become one of the league’s best scoring big men, averaging 20.4 points a game in 2010-11. The Nets need a healthy and effective Lopez if they hope to crack the top tier of the Eastern Conference.

Then again, they might not need nearly as much from him after acquiring Johnson, Mirza Teletovic and others this summer. This will be, by far, the most talented Nets team that Lopez has been part of.

The Nets’ new team store — a staple for most franchises these days — is remarkably the first in the franchise history. But then there was not much of a fan base to serve in East Rutherford, or any ability to walk up to the arena in the Meadowlands to make a purchase.

More than 100 fans lined up along Flatbush for the store’s opening Monday morning. Some 300 filed through the shop in the first hour. Lopez lingered long after the autograph session was over.

“I want to spend as much time as possible here,” he said of the arena. “This is really our home now.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 25, 2012, on Page B12 of the New York edition with the headline: Two Nets Take Stock Of Future In Brooklyn. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe